You naturally ask how it is that in a country where gambling is so strictly forbidden, that here is a shop entirely given up to that vice, and that openly and in sight of the crowds that usually flock to a fair, the place is packed with men who make no attempt at disguising what they are engaged in. You will soon discover that the owner of the place pays a certain settled sum into the Yamen that is divided amongst the "Man that knows the County" and his disreputable set of underlings; and should any policeman happen to have official business in the fair, and were passing along the street and saw the eager, noisy gamblers gathered round the tables, he would profess the utmost ignorance as to what was going on in that disreputable place. Should any of the more respectable inhabitants make a formal complaint against the betting and gambling fraternity, the magistrate would appear to be filled with indignation, and runners would be sent to apprehend the lawbreakers to bring them before him to be punished according to law. They would find, however, when they arrived that every trace of gambling had been removed, and only perhaps a young lad would be found, with an innocent-looking face, selling peanuts and candies. The fact is, before they started with their warrant from the mandarin, they sent on a swift-footed messenger ahead of them to warn the men they were coming, and telling them to clear out. China is a country full of lofty ideas. These are found in the writings of the sages. They are pasted up in crimson strips of paper on the doorposts of the houses and shops in every city in the Empire. They are found staring at one over the temples of the gods, and on the lofty doors of the Yamens, so that one would suppose that these latter were churches where the highest morality and the profoundest of theological teachings were being daily expounded. There is no place indeed that is considered so bad that a public sense of decency would demand that they should be excluded from it. Low, miserable opium dens, and houses of ill-fame, and gambling hells, and homes that are the abode of thieves are adorned with the most exquisite sentences full of the highest morality, and seemingly culled with the greatest care from the vast repertory that the language contains, as if to condemn the very vices that are rampant within.